I still don’t get why you would put anything on a Paypal transfer. As with the memo line of a check, anything unnecessary – that is, other than a name, address, account # or the like needed for book-keeping – is suspicious. If you’re check says “Happy Birthday”, you can be sure it’s going to be flagged.
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Well the guy who had a dog-walker take out his dog Dash, had a similar problem.
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“Thoughtcrime!” everybody shriek it with me and point accusingly.
Paypal is pretty crappy, but wow.
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My ass hurts constantly from the raping it gets from Paypal, but if you sell on eBay what other options do you have?
Magically, I just got paid by PayPal…
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PayPal has many “little ideas” - not just terrorist and country codes.
For instance they held my incoming payment for a camera because “you have never sold a camera before”. This cost me the sale as the buyer decided I must be running a scam if the mighty PayPal was holding up his payment to me to “protect the buyer”.
I only use PayPal for ebay…and never ever bother with calling their Customer Service. Everytime I call I get “Victor” who speaks only rudimentary English from a script - and even interrupts the Customer to tell them he has not finished “greeting them according to the script sheet”.
And of course they refuse to allow us to use our credit-cards as the “default payment method”…so I have a special bank account with $10 balance to satisfy their demands and then have to click 4-times to get to the credit card.
PayPal still suffers from “Megism”…never trust anyone for anything.
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In fairness to PayPal I can imagine they’d get into trouble if they didn’t at least attempt to screen for payments relating to sanctioned countries.
I’ve had the “top six sanctioned countries” drummed into my head at work (in no particular order: Syria, Sudan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar/Burma) but certain diplomatic advances mean that this list might be about to get a little shorter.
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@frauenfelder you tried to send me money via PayPal for a CoolTools submission. Try as I might, I could not accept it. It’s one of many lessons learned for me, and I don’t even try to use PayPal anymore. You should consider avoiding it as well.
This has been a problem for coin collectors who buy and sell on eBay, since before PayPal was split off. The problem was that even when the buyer and seller were both located in the US, Cuban coins were treated as banned products of Cuba - like cigars. Coin sellers on eBay go to great lengths to describe their listings without using the words Cuba or Cuban, to evade the ban.
The reality is that many 20th Century Cuban coins were minted in the US by the US Mint, from 1915 to 1960. The US Mint produced coins under contract for many world governments over the years, but no longer do so as far as I know.
http://www.pcgs.com/News/World-Coins-And-The-Us-Mint
A bit of unrelated trivia: Up until the US Coinage Act of 1857 many world coins were used as legal tender in the US, because the US Mint was unable to keep up with demand for coins for daily commerce.
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Uranium.
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You can’t use the word Isis remember, because Paypal think that this will help in the war on terror cos all terrorists put Isis in their addresses. It matters not if this rule victimises people who are associated with the ancient Egytians or companies that happen to contain the same acronym.
Many years ago I tried to purchase an item from a company in Thailand using a credit card issued by my Credit Union. A couple weeks later I got an email from the company telling me the payment hadn’t gone through.
Talked to my credit union, “it’s a credit card company policy.”
Talked to the credit card company, “not our policy, it’s your credit union.”
Back to the credit union. “Oh yes, we have a list of restricted countries where fraud is prevalent, so we canceled the payment. The list is right on our web site…”
“Really? Show me.” After 10 minutes of fruitless browsing, he couldn’t show me any list, but offered to do a wire money transfer, which included a $35 or so fee. Mind you, this was a $200 purchase. I agreed, on the condition that they waive the fee, which he assured me they would.
A month later and my merchandise arrived just fine, but my credit union statement showed the $35 fee being charged. So yet another trip to the credit union to explain that all of my accounts would be moved within the week if the charge was still present in 24 hours.
They finally got it all straighened out, but what a bother. And I still don’t know if they still have a secret list of restricted countries…
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I imagine there are ordinary people with names similar to Cuba Gooding Junior or Marc Cuban who know all about this bullshit
We pay quite a bit of money to maintain the mints that produce our currency.
Surely the government could find a way to facilitate payment over the internet that wouldn’t be burdened private profit and anti competitive interests
Exactly. It’s not PayPal, it’s any company that touches money who doesn’t want to get an unfriendly letter from the Treasury Department.
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You figure those two are buying a lot of stuff on Ebay?
It does feel like PayPal goes the extra mile to make sure people disliked by the establishment don’t get money
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Notwithstanding the otherwise constant stream of disingenuous and delusional nonsense that flows from eBay/PayPal, the share price history of these two clunky operators demonstrates the reality:
Aug 2007: (pre John Donahoe) EBAY ~$40; AMZN ~$40;
Jul 2015 (pre eBay-PayPal split): EBAY ~$66; AMZN ~$480;
Jul 2015 (post-split): EBAY ~$28; PYPL ~$37; AMZN ~$530;
Recently: EBAY ~$31; PYPL ~$38; AMZN ~$772—LOL …
PayPal is still standing still, and eBay has for years been effectively going backwards …
Notwithstanding the “spin-off” of PayPal from eBay, eBay and “PreyPal” remain effectively joined at the hip—for at least the next five years—and anyone that thinks otherwise is simply uninformed; and, thanks to a continuation of most of the destructive policies introduced over the eight year reign (2007–2015) of the “Pain from Bain”, John Joseph Donahoe II, the eBay marketplace is continuing on its slow journey down the toilet; nevertheless, during Johnny Ho’s occupation of the eBay corner office, this cretin and his gang of hand-picked Keystone Kops still managed to obtain for themselves massive, unearned, “performance” bonuses—while the company’s shareholders received not one penny.
PayPal is a clunky, non-bank-licensed (except in Luxembourg), non-deposit-insured, virtually non-regulated, “pretend” bank; a higher fee-charging payments intermediary that, in the main, rides on the back of the world’s banks’ existing payments systems, with no formal agreement with those banks other than PayPal’s operating of a credit card merchant account facility with, and the making of direct debits/credits on some users’ bank accounts via, one of those real banks.
PayPal is, in its own words, “a merchant of sorts”; it is not a licensed “bank”; virtually everything that “PreyPal” does is done via “marketing” arrangements with licensed financial institutions—for example, look for the identity of the actual credit provider (in the micro print) on their credit providing instruments.
Merchants’ funds received via “PreyPal” are at risk of being subjected to lengthy arbitrary holds; $18 billion of users’ funds left “on deposit” with the PayPal faux “bank” are not FDIC deposit-insured. Even more perilous (for PayPal’s shareholders), the great majority of PayPal’s business originates from its (still) effectively mandated place on the eBay marketplace, so it logically follows that—with the destructive Johnny Ho-Ho-Ho now sitting at the head of the PayPal boardroom table—“PreyPal” will undoubtedly be accompanying eBay on its journey to the sewage farm.
“Effective October 1, 2015, we will remove the tiered merchant rates for US domestic and international Purchase Payments*. This means your rate will increase if you are currently receiving a merchant volume discount. Your new rate will be the standard rate of 2.9% + $0.30 USD for domestic transactions and 3.9% + fixed fee** for international transactions.”—PayPal, 27 Aug 2015.
The reality is, PayPal’s parasitic, higher fee-charging payments operation has little long-term future—outside of its mandated place on the atrophying eBay marketplace—now that professional online/mobile payments offerings from MasterCard (“MasterPass”) and Visa (“Visa Checkout”) are available to any online merchant that has (or can obtain) a credit card merchant account with a real bank.
With respect particularly to “mobile” payments, notwithstanding Apple Pay’s disappointing initial showing, methinks Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay, “MasterPass”, and “Visa Checkout”, that is, those entities that have formal relationships with the world’s retail banks and MasterCard/Visa, will eventually bury PayPal’s parasitic operation.
By using PayPal you forego the usual statutory protections that apply to credit card transactions. Nevertheless, PayPal users should never give PayPal an authority to direct debit their bank account; PayPal should only ever be given access to funds via a real-bank credit card account; that way your credit card-issuing bank will be the final arbiter of any transaction dispute. Conversely, sellers should never accept payment via PayPal for goods that are going to be picked up by the buyer; in such circumstances PayPal offers sellers zero protection from “item not received” scammers .
PayPal is effectively a “pay day” lender. In May 2015, PayPal was fined $10 million over its “Bill Me Later” service, in part for unfairly charging some customers deferred-interest fees. The company was also required to return $15 million to consumers who used the service, which is now called PayPal Credit.
PayPal’s one-time adoptive parent, eBay, is likely the most unscrupulous commercial entity operating on this planet; but, have no fear, eBay is an equal-opportunity fraudster; demonstrably, they will knowingly aid and abet the defrauding of buyers by unscrupulous eBay merchants who bid on their own auctions, and, conversely, of honest sellers by unscrupulous buyers—as long as there is a financial benefit in such fraud for eBay.
And if anyone thinks that the clunky “PreyPal” is any more scrupulous than eBay—given their equally poor customer service and lack of any truly balanced mediation of transaction disputes by human beings, which effectively results in a hard-wired bias towards buyers/payers that they now necessarily have to pander to—good luck to all you small online merchants who may get burned in the process.
For a detailed analysis of the ugly reality of eBay’s demonstrable, calculated, facilitation of endemic shill bidding fraud on consumers on its auctions marketplace—Google “Shill Bidding on eBay: Case Study #5”
Goodbye clunky PayPal—it’s not been nice knowing you—Google “Retail Payments: The Reality” …
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I worked at REDACTED, so I’m getting a kick. Online payment companies live and die by fraud numbers. Yes, it is shitty. Alternative clearinghouses aren’t better.
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